CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The head of a University of Virginia affiliate focused on presidential scholarship is defending his decision to hire a departing member of President Donald Trump’s administration as a senior fellow.

Miller Center CEO William Antholis said in a statement Friday that he’d received significant backlash for hiring Trump’s legislative affairs director Marc Short.

A petition has circulated opposed to Short’s appointment by faculty and students still angry about the president’s response to last year’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, where a woman was killed.

Antholis said Short’s one-year fellowship will bring to the centre a “missing critical voice” of a Trump supporter while helping the centre’s scholars stay “at the cutting edge” of their fields.